Cure Remedies

According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, when we experience discomfort in our bodies, this is our body’s way of signaling that there’s a blockage of blood and energy. Essentially, this discomfort is your body’s way of requesting you to take action and do what must be done to correct what’s causing this blockage. Obviously, a headache isn’t different. Here in the western world the “go-to” cures for headaches and other discomfort is the medicine cabinet. Here you’ll be able to find a myriad of painkillers including: Tylenol (acetaminophen), Aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) and Advil (ibuprofen) not to mention the stronger and complication prone prescription painkillers. However, ultimately popping a couple of Extra Strength Tylenol every 4 hours or thereabouts, isn’t actually correcting anything. This is just hiding the symptom (pain) and not treating the cause, which might be as straightforward as say an unhealthy diet.
Most would agree that fixing the issue and relieving the cause is much more beneficial than simply medicating in order to treat the symptoms. Luckily, Chinese Medicine is well equipped with natural cures that may help treat the actual cause and avoid the nasty complications of many medications.
Nutrition
This is one of the hands-down most powerful cures for many conditions we would like to treat in our bodies. We’ve all heard the old proverb, “You are what you eat.” Well, this is pretty accurate. The flow of energy through our body is very closely tied to our diet and food we consume. Food we eat end up in our blood and meridians (the paths by which “qi” flows throughout our bodies) in the shape of energy. The consumption of healthy foods helps to maintain a good flow of blood and Qi throughout the body and to the head, which helps to stop headaches.
Foods to avoid: Wine, cheese, sugar and caffeine.
Home remedy: Consume one cup of fresh carrot juice every 4 hours until your headache subsides.
Vitamins: B-complex vitamins, especially vitamin B6 can be very effective in treating and eliminating headaches.
Massage
Apply peppermint, fennel, wintergreen, eucalyptus and camphor essential oils to the forehead and in a circular motion, massage your forehead gently.
Acupressure
First, locate the Valley of Harmony (LI-4) acupoint which is the web found between your index finger and your thumb. Now, using your other hand, continuously apply pressure until you start to feel some soreness. Continue applying pressure for roughly 2 minutes, and then do the same on your other hand.
The second acupoint that you’re going to want to find is Great Yang (Taiyang). This acupoint can be discovered in the hollow of your temples. In order to stimulate this point, you are going to massage these spots in a circular motion with either the tips of your index fingers or the knuckles of your thumbs.
Now that allergy season is going at full speed and headaches become a commonplace occurrence for lots of us, I’m hoping you try out a few of these home treatments and find some needed relief!